The Books the Most Powerful People in A.I. Are Reading

The power lists Observer publishes aren’t just rankings of success. They are blueprints of influence, charting the flow of capital and ideas across industries. When we started digging into the most influential names in artificial intelligence in 2026, we realized that beyond a list of names and titles, we were looking for a window into how each of our honorees thinks about the world. To that end, we asked them not only for their thoughts on the future of A.I. but also for book recommendations. The result is a reading list curated by the engineers, thought leaders, financiers and founders making the decisions molding the future of artificial intelligence (and, concurrently, the future of the growing number of industries the technology powers). There’s no one unifying thread in their answers, and in that sense, the titles reveal little about the field’s direction. What the selection of books below does offer is a glimpse int...